Given the experience they already had, they supposed it just stood to reason that Matthew Crawley would already be dead. It just seemed like the kind of anticlimactic conclusion to such an absurd series of ceaseless senselessness that had underscored the entire "mission."
He was the reason any of this had happened, and there he sat on a splintered chair with a lukewarm blood trickling from his mouth and pooling on the floor. His throat was cut with an obviously serrated edge and the shredded muscle and rubbery looking bits of trachea protruded like meaty fiber optics. They had no chance to exchange words with this man, or to punish him themselves for what crimes he had committed. He was the most influential man in all the land, with the most authority and wealth and say, and he sat slumped in a chair like an average peasant snuffed out in a highway robbery. His perfectly pressed clothes were torn and wrinkled from a presumed struggle, his ascot was loose and dangling, and his hair, always so flattened with pomade, was prickly and tousled, like bent tines of a fork. And his eyes were open, staring at nothing and seeing nothing. How small he was now. He sat on no throne and he was already in a catacomb.
Needless to say, this was an underwhelming conclusion to an odyssey that had included melee with a gorilla and flattened skulls and a crazy woman in a basement. It was as if they'd opened Capone's vault and found the beer bottle.
They had their [[#|health]], at least. All else considered, nobody was too worse for the wear. And Klaus had a new moniker as well. "The Acolyte," they called him. All the members of the Red Church bowed to him, licked their lips at him, and bugged their eyes at him as if "the one" had come. He'd followed what Gumble had said and detoured to the Red Church to find the knife he'd lost on the train tracks in his fight with a gorilla. That was his first mistake.
There they'd met Piss, the high priest. He wasn't all that intimidating. He wore urine-stained burlap and looked as if a brisk breeze would sweep him away for miles.
"The ACOLYTE," he stammered. "The Orange Man prophesied you'd come."
Second red flag. Or, orange flag really.
Why they so unquestioningly followed the man called Piss, a man prone to unexpected and unmentioned urinations and long, meandering bouts of maniacal tangents, is, in hindsight, hard to say. It was perhaps the influence Klaus had, and maybe the few remaining vestiges of youth and innocence that the knife his father had given him engendered. It was a pair of hands from the annals of his soul pulling along some sort of an invisible rope.
Nobody, ultimately, was surprised that this was a set-up from Gumble. When they entered the mausoleum, they heard a familiar tune playing tinny on a system of radios rigged together by a frayed system of [[#|power cords]] – “From This Moment On” by Ella Fitzgerald – and they all immediately associated it as the uncharacteristically peppy song that had played as the soundtrack on their Hell train episode.
They followed Piss – only Lelo, Marcus and Klaus, as the cowardly Mayor Twarld stayed behind with Bernie, and Patrick had been denied entrance thanks to his associated with another religious sect. The Mayor may have been a weakling, but he knew better than to enter an enclosed structure with a dodgy individual with no [[#|bladder control]] known to all as an unhinged cannibal. Patrick however saw it as incumbent upon himself to sneak inside to protect his group. It was a surprise to see what a non-starter Piss actually was. He was extinguished with a swift arrow to the head despite never having actually posed any threat. When he flopped past the entrance to the room of “treasure,” he heard a familiar voice – Gumble – scream, “Ooooh, doggy! We’re gonna have us some combat!”
The situation manifested itself immediately to the clever Patrick. Gumble had killed Matthew Crawley so as to say he did what they requested. He intended to then pin it on them and escape unharmed. It was an ingenious ulterior motive he had the entire time. These people were never more than scapegoats to him. And Klaus’s new label as “The Acolyte” made sense too. The Red Church spent their days waiting for the acolyte to come so they could consume him and absorb his holiness, Gumble explained. Klaus was like a goose they’d been fattening and waiting to eat. Gumble had the naive cannibals under his thumb. It was a card he knew he could pull at any time, given his position to them as “The Orange Man.”
A perfect plan it was. And he even had brought Bob Vister, who he still called Daddy, and bound him to a chair so he could pop him off in the name of the group and assume full power of the Fighting Phils. Vister was the morality of that faction, and once Gumble took him out, they would devolve into total anarchy and insanity under his sole helm.
It was, admittedly, the definition of craftiness. Gumble would get what he wanted and have the evidence of his sordid ways literally eaten by lunatics. But he always lacked foresight.
He mocked them, goofed around disarmingly, and made a break for the exit knowing that the group would immediately be torn to shreds. But he didn’t put into account Bernie, the man who had evaded death so many times himself. With one shot to the leg of Gumble, he no longer had his speed. Gumble limped outside and fell into the bloody arms of a member of the Red Church.
“Eat them, fellas! Those guys are the delicious acolyte guys! Eat em’ up! I got you what you wanted!”
The Red Church expected to, but then they saw Mayor Twarld pulling a limp corpse out of the mausoleum. They recognized it at once. It was Piss. They were immobilized by instant grief and there were no sounds to be heard but the humming of the wind. Finally, Twarld cleared his voice and spoke through the fog.
“Hey guys!” he said. “Look at this! That guy killed Piss! I went to school with him! I’m very sad! I guess The Orange Man was a false prophet the whole time!”
That was all it took for the feeble-minded cannibals to change course. Immediately, they turned to the injured Gumble.
“Fuckin’ Twarld,” he said.
And it was over. They descended upon their most unholy traitor and there was a bloody mist that exploded from him immediately. Arms and bones and shreds of clothing rained upon the ground. It wasn’t the acolyte they were eating, but Gumble tasted nearly as good.
Everybody saw Twarld grinning. He was oddly unaffected by the grisly demise of his old political rival and the man who turned out to be the nemesis of his assassins. But he had nothing to be sad about. Matthew Crawley was dead. The face of the regime had fallen. And nobody would ever know Twarld was behind it. The other Crawley had been killed concurrently by the Fighting Phils the same day. By order of succession, Twarld was now the man who’d take the reigns of Hellwaukee.
He made finger guns and shot them at the Red Church yard.
“Ku ku ku!” he said.
And then, the new president of Hellwaukee blew imaginary smoke from those imaginary guns.
He was the reason any of this had happened, and there he sat on a splintered chair with a lukewarm blood trickling from his mouth and pooling on the floor. His throat was cut with an obviously serrated edge and the shredded muscle and rubbery looking bits of trachea protruded like meaty fiber optics. They had no chance to exchange words with this man, or to punish him themselves for what crimes he had committed. He was the most influential man in all the land, with the most authority and wealth and say, and he sat slumped in a chair like an average peasant snuffed out in a highway robbery. His perfectly pressed clothes were torn and wrinkled from a presumed struggle, his ascot was loose and dangling, and his hair, always so flattened with pomade, was prickly and tousled, like bent tines of a fork. And his eyes were open, staring at nothing and seeing nothing. How small he was now. He sat on no throne and he was already in a catacomb.
Needless to say, this was an underwhelming conclusion to an odyssey that had included melee with a gorilla and flattened skulls and a crazy woman in a basement. It was as if they'd opened Capone's vault and found the beer bottle.
They had their [[#|health]], at least. All else considered, nobody was too worse for the wear. And Klaus had a new moniker as well. "The Acolyte," they called him. All the members of the Red Church bowed to him, licked their lips at him, and bugged their eyes at him as if "the one" had come. He'd followed what Gumble had said and detoured to the Red Church to find the knife he'd lost on the train tracks in his fight with a gorilla. That was his first mistake.
There they'd met Piss, the high priest. He wasn't all that intimidating. He wore urine-stained burlap and looked as if a brisk breeze would sweep him away for miles.
"The ACOLYTE," he stammered. "The Orange Man prophesied you'd come."
Second red flag. Or, orange flag really.
Why they so unquestioningly followed the man called Piss, a man prone to unexpected and unmentioned urinations and long, meandering bouts of maniacal tangents, is, in hindsight, hard to say. It was perhaps the influence Klaus had, and maybe the few remaining vestiges of youth and innocence that the knife his father had given him engendered. It was a pair of hands from the annals of his soul pulling along some sort of an invisible rope.
Nobody, ultimately, was surprised that this was a set-up from Gumble. When they entered the mausoleum, they heard a familiar tune playing tinny on a system of radios rigged together by a frayed system of [[#|power cords]] – “From This Moment On” by Ella Fitzgerald – and they all immediately associated it as the uncharacteristically peppy song that had played as the soundtrack on their Hell train episode.
They followed Piss – only Lelo, Marcus and Klaus, as the cowardly Mayor Twarld stayed behind with Bernie, and Patrick had been denied entrance thanks to his associated with another religious sect. The Mayor may have been a weakling, but he knew better than to enter an enclosed structure with a dodgy individual with no [[#|bladder control]] known to all as an unhinged cannibal. Patrick however saw it as incumbent upon himself to sneak inside to protect his group. It was a surprise to see what a non-starter Piss actually was. He was extinguished with a swift arrow to the head despite never having actually posed any threat. When he flopped past the entrance to the room of “treasure,” he heard a familiar voice – Gumble – scream, “Ooooh, doggy! We’re gonna have us some combat!”
The situation manifested itself immediately to the clever Patrick. Gumble had killed Matthew Crawley so as to say he did what they requested. He intended to then pin it on them and escape unharmed. It was an ingenious ulterior motive he had the entire time. These people were never more than scapegoats to him. And Klaus’s new label as “The Acolyte” made sense too. The Red Church spent their days waiting for the acolyte to come so they could consume him and absorb his holiness, Gumble explained. Klaus was like a goose they’d been fattening and waiting to eat. Gumble had the naive cannibals under his thumb. It was a card he knew he could pull at any time, given his position to them as “The Orange Man.”
A perfect plan it was. And he even had brought Bob Vister, who he still called Daddy, and bound him to a chair so he could pop him off in the name of the group and assume full power of the Fighting Phils. Vister was the morality of that faction, and once Gumble took him out, they would devolve into total anarchy and insanity under his sole helm.
It was, admittedly, the definition of craftiness. Gumble would get what he wanted and have the evidence of his sordid ways literally eaten by lunatics. But he always lacked foresight.
He mocked them, goofed around disarmingly, and made a break for the exit knowing that the group would immediately be torn to shreds. But he didn’t put into account Bernie, the man who had evaded death so many times himself. With one shot to the leg of Gumble, he no longer had his speed. Gumble limped outside and fell into the bloody arms of a member of the Red Church.
“Eat them, fellas! Those guys are the delicious acolyte guys! Eat em’ up! I got you what you wanted!”
The Red Church expected to, but then they saw Mayor Twarld pulling a limp corpse out of the mausoleum. They recognized it at once. It was Piss. They were immobilized by instant grief and there were no sounds to be heard but the humming of the wind. Finally, Twarld cleared his voice and spoke through the fog.
“Hey guys!” he said. “Look at this! That guy killed Piss! I went to school with him! I’m very sad! I guess The Orange Man was a false prophet the whole time!”
That was all it took for the feeble-minded cannibals to change course. Immediately, they turned to the injured Gumble.
“Fuckin’ Twarld,” he said.
And it was over. They descended upon their most unholy traitor and there was a bloody mist that exploded from him immediately. Arms and bones and shreds of clothing rained upon the ground. It wasn’t the acolyte they were eating, but Gumble tasted nearly as good.
Everybody saw Twarld grinning. He was oddly unaffected by the grisly demise of his old political rival and the man who turned out to be the nemesis of his assassins. But he had nothing to be sad about. Matthew Crawley was dead. The face of the regime had fallen. And nobody would ever know Twarld was behind it. The other Crawley had been killed concurrently by the Fighting Phils the same day. By order of succession, Twarld was now the man who’d take the reigns of Hellwaukee.
He made finger guns and shot them at the Red Church yard.
“Ku ku ku!” he said.
And then, the new president of Hellwaukee blew imaginary smoke from those imaginary guns.
“Welcome to Twarldwaukee!”